#ripuels

Alistair, with his calm demeanor, had always been quite easily trodden over by humans. His scores in subservience and passiveness were what made him him, but only served to mark him more likely to cave to aggressive demands.

And aggressive women.

“Madam, I must insist that you return to your quarters. You are still recovering from surgery, and it is best for you to--”

“Do I look like I’m made of glass?” Ripley’s voice has become uncommonly low, almost threatening. “I demand to see him. I demand it. I’ve…” she paused, breathing erratic and panicked. “I just want to see him. Please.”

And then Alistair made the mistake of catching his eye over Amanda Ripley’s shoulder. She spun around, tracked his gaze, and promptly landed him right in the middle of her intense -- relieved -- stare. If androids had a concept of feeling naked, Samuels was sure he’d feel absolutely bare before her golden hazel eyes. Ripley made no move to approach him. In fact (and Christopher rather appreciated the idea) she seemed like she’d forgotten the station’s medical wing entirely, completely lost in his own gaze.

Or, at least he would like to think.

Eventually Alistair quit flicking his eyes between them and took his cue to leave, shoving some forms into Ripley’s frozen fingers.

“If you have any questions or concerns, please visit me at the front desk. Or, better yet,” he stepped backwards towards his desk. “Buzz a nurse from your room.” From there, the frazzled android took his leave.

Amanda Ripley, Queen of Scathing Retorts (in his own mind), did not even blink in the retreating synthetic’s direction. In fact, she was on her toes, stepping closer and closer and closer, until there was barely three feet between them.

“Samuels?” She clutched the stack of forms to her chest. Unsure, hesitant. Doubting. Hoping. Afraid.

“Ripley,” he answered, and his voice was as it ever was. Identical to Alistair’s, to the other Samuels unit named George who stood as a nurse in the trauma ward (no doubt one of the first faces she’d seen.) His tone was warm as a synthetic voicebox could be, measured perfectly for the occasion and person he spoke to. Words always chosen quickly and carefully, treading lightly over fragile human sensibilities. Technically, she should not have been able to tell it was him.

But, by God, this was a Ripley.

So the sound of her name off his lips made her shed tears so suddenly as if someone had turned a faucet. It caused her to shake on her two badly damaged legs, nearly knocking herself over. Before she could fall, however, he reacted. He caught her in his arms while the forms flew and her crutches clattered to the ground.

“Oh God, is it really… you?” Still the slightest bit of doubt, of fear.

“Thanks to you, yes.” And Christopher knew he could thank her until he outlived her, and still never be able to thank her enough. “Your swift power-plug pulling is to blame for my continued existence. As well as dragging me behind you every step of the way until my reboot was complete.” There was far too much distance between them, which he aimed to close shortly.

Ripley had not blinked in a while. That small detail concerned him greatly. Ah, there it was. She inhaled deeply and whispered, “I’m not… not the only one? The only one who made it?”

He shifted her up a bit, then hoisted her up completely in his arms (bridal style, he recalled before shoving the memory brutally back into the darkest recesses of his computer brain.) Thinking like that would summon numerous preventative programs and warning pop-ups. Getting out of one “post-mission debrief” also known as a wipe was one thing; being summoned for another would be the end as he knew it.

As this Christopher knew it.

This Chris was finding the idea of falling in love with Amanda Ripley more and more favorable the longer he held her in his--

Immediately, an error box flashed across his HUD and a bit of coding forced his arms to release Ripley onto the floor ever so gently, only lingering on her waist long enough to regain her own balance. Disappointment flashed through her eyes, gone as soon as it had appeared. Fleeting like a spark through a cable.

“Samuels… Christoper…”

Instead of giving in to anything going on in those viciously traitorous subroutines, and ignoring the longing in his friend’s (just a friend?) face, he began leading her back through the medical wing of this station. Back to her hospital room. Back to where she belonged.

And then he would continue onward to make his reports, and be shipped off to his long-abandoned desk in a large space-station in a large sector of this galaxy, one in hundreds of thousands of Samuelses.

Shipped off, leaving behind the first person, the first human, to acknowledge him.

Christopher truly felt he could kiss this woman.

But an idea is just an idea, and no android ought to be having any of those.

-

Sometime during the fight Samuels' arm manages to get rammed tight beneath the collapsed support beam, white hydraulic fluid soaking into his torn jacket and seeping onto the floor.

"Just... keep still, and try to reroute power from-- ah!" Ripley breaks off and preens as she pulls a large pry-bar out from the back of a cabinet. It was a far cry from her beloved maintenance jack, but it would hopefully be enough to pry Samuels out.

"I assure you, I'm... Fine, all things considered. Please be careful." Samuels chides gently, looking much less mother-hen than usual sprawled across the floor, his shoulder joint bent at an unnatural angle. He wasn't giving off any signs of being in pain, though he was obviously peeved by the jolting twist of his torso and his inability to sit or lay correctly. He was still refusing to meet her eye, instead opting to stare blankly at the ceiling, his eyes stubbornly not moving.

"Mm. You don't look fine." Kneeling, she set the pry-bar down with a metallic clink and crouched to get a better look at the half-ton beam crushing her companion's limb. A large chunk of flesh on his bicep was scraped off, along with most of his clothing, but all of the hydraulic 'blood' seemed to have come from the single tear. "Can you move everything down there?"

"I was told to reroute power, so currently I cannot, no." He snarks softly, laying his head back against the floor with a thud. Despite the gravity of the situation ( and in the compared relaxation of it, considering the previous ) Ripley found herself snorting.

"I'm sorry I'm not an expert. I don't want you frying yourself or bleeding out on me or--- god I don't know I'm just..." She rammed the pry bar a foot away from his arm under the beam and torqued it, testing. Nothing moved. She frowned in frustration. "I really don't want to take it off."

"I wholly agree with that and would very much like to have it remain attached if at all possible." Samuels responds immediately, eyes closing and expression lax. He was resorting to a deadpan that worried her. She wasn't sure if it was pain, or re routing systems, or stress; it was making her uncomfortable. She's had far too much hydraulic fluid on her hands of late.

"I'm just going to try and grind it out, there's nothing else I can do." She finally concedes. There was no way she could see to get the beam off without either scraping his arm out and dealing with the damage or taking the limb off completely. The fact that he could have a new one fitted when they finally made it back to the company, (if they ever made it back to the company) was a comforting thought. "I'll just have to solder the tubing closed or something." She mumbled more to herself than to him as she got back down on her knees.

"Can I ask you something unsettling, personal and rude?" She murmurs to him as she rams the pry bar in between the beam and floor again, from a different angle. It takes him a bit longer to respond, but when he does it's with a casual sound of confirmation. "So. Say things did go really very sideways..." She hesitates long enough for him to crack an eye and look up at her, one brow tweaking.

"Say things went sideways and you went offline again-- where is everything stored? Assuming you don't have any power surges or anything." She stumbles through the sentence as fast as possible, getting down once more so she can shield her face with her shoulder and hide the burn of her embarrassment. There was something so completely taboo about bringing up his synthetic nature so tactlessly, but she really, really needed to know. To her eternal gratefulness, he didn't make a big deal out of it, though his responses were becoming more and more delayed.

"If you... Disconnect power from my skull and remove it, it contains--- all my personality and thoughts. Memories. I'm sure carrying around my disembodied head wouldn't be the most fun you could have with a deactivated synthetic, but... I'd appreciate it greatly. Somehow you've made me grow quite fond of existing."

"I'm not losing you again if it kills me, Chris." She whispers without turning around, her voice cracking unattractively.

He makes no sign of hearing her at all, and she couldn't be more grateful.

"Alright. Let's do this, I guess. Ready?" She fidgets with the pry bar for her last moment of procrastination, kicking herself for losing her will so easily. Then again, if it had been a human with their limb crushed to the floor there would have been far too much screaming for her to have a dandy conversation about it.

"I am."

"Heave-ho."

With a deep breath she rams the pry-bar into the space of his arm and the beam, hearing the sickening crunch of his parts. She almost gags at it, but is cut off as Samuels stiffens and lurches.

"Please refrain from damaging Company property." Samuels states in a stern, eerily not-quite-him tone, and she has has to stomp the primal fear that drags her gut down with a vengeance. She blocks it out completely, working at grinding his bicep out from under the beam. He's bleeding everywhere and she's soaked in it, but not surprisingly the lubricant is helping her slide him loose.

Ripley's still shaking when she turns to him, hands pressing down on his oozing limb. He has his good hand clamped over his mouth and is staring her down with wide eyes.

She meets his stare and gives her best smile. It's got too much teeth and she bets it looks as pained as it feels, but she doesn't move back from him, doesn't lurch away. She knows him, and she trusts him implicitly, but a small part of her also feels as though she's petting a tiger pretending it's a kitten.

"I'm so sorry." He sounds way more alarmed than she feels, despite the thudding of her heart in her chest.

"It's ok."

"It's not ok, Amanda. It's terrible, I'm so sorry."

"It's not-- I stuck a pry bar in your arm, Samuels, it's fine! I'm fine. Look at how fine I am."

He does, glancing up and down her. He doesn't seem convinced. "You're shaking."

"You're still bleeding through my fingers of course I'm shaking."

"I'm really very sorry about that, as well."

Ripley gives him a frustrated sigh. "Don't be, it's fine. You stop for me so I can sleep and deal with me limping all over the place -- a little bit of lube on my hands isn't going to kill me."

"You're white up to your elbows, that hardly counts as 'a little bit.'"

"Who taught you to be sassy?" She can't keep her smile down any longer, and it's overpowering her frustration. She's starting to plan out how to staunch the flow, though some sort of internal repairs seems to be working at it already.

"I have a state-of-the-art learning processor, you know this.--- It's what allows me to adapt to social situations and--- You're teasing me."

Ripley flashes him an award winning grin. "Can you try and hold all.. this.. in for me? I need- to get stuff out of my bag."

Samuels' hand is shaking when he brings it over to clamp down on the tear, staunching the blood flow significantly better than she had. "Soldering the wounds closed will cause sufficient damage to the liquid pathways, but I will lose most of the use of the arm. I can repair a lot of it myself, but I fear I may bleed out in the mean time. I can already feel.. strain on my -- organs."

She frowns. "How off is the chemical makeup of the Joe's blood?"

Samuels makes a face at this, giving her a stare of disbelief. "No. Absolutely not."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I refuse."

Ripley pulls a face right back. "We had this talk about dying, remember? The ones you leave behind?"

Samuels scowls at her, actually scowls. She gathers every ounce of stubborn she has and stares him down. When he realizes she's standing up in a battle of wills against a synthetic, he clunks his head back down on the floor and relents.

"It's based off of Weyland-Yutani composition. It's cheaply made and poorly copied, but it will technically do the same job. Poorly."

"So your organs won't overheat and fry."

".. Essentially. Listen, Amanda-- I haven't lost all that much, really."

"No you listen, how am I going to get it in your system? Fluids drain into your stomach, right? So--"

"I am not drinking Joe blood, I am not. That's---" She watches him struggle to find an appropriate word, his voice fluttering between distress and disgust as he settles.

"Unsanitary."

She powers right past it. A small part of her knows she shouldn't be disregarding his emotions, but if he'd rather die than assimilate shit-for-parts she didn't really have a choice.

"Does the fluid expire once it's settled or do I have to kill a fresh one?"

Samuels groans and his fingers twitch where they're holding his bicep, fluttering with some subconscious motion he's denying. He doesn't respond.

"I'm going to have to do something rather drastic." She repeats blankly at him, and it has the intended effect. His eyes snap back to her and his frown deepens.

"Settled is--- fine."

"Thank you."

"I'll have to-- take it in slowly, it's not a very-- efficient... system. For getting fluids in. It's meant for drainage."

With her tools gathered around her knees Ripley rests her hand over his, his fluids wetting the drying white layer embedded into the cracks in her palms.

"Let me see..." She murmurs, dropping into a caretaker tone. He moves his hand from it and she's pleased to note that it's down to a manageable trickle. She's terrified it's because he doesn't have enough fluid in him to sustain a more intense flow than that. Keeping her hand cupped over the back of his longer than necessary, she hopes he'll take it as a comfort. His eyes are closed again, and she keeps hearing small grinding noises from his main cavity.

Ripley realizes with a horrified start that she can feel the heat radiating off of his body, through his jacket. With rising panic she peels back the skin of his bicep, digging into it with needle nose pliers to pull parts away from the vein-tubing. Beyond all hope she hopes she's not just damaging him more.

The tubes are all white and soaked and she can barely see what she's doing, but she manages to slather them in bonding agent and slowly stitch them back together with thread from her med kit. It's sloppy and shitty and she accepts with resignation that he won't retain the use of this arm if he makes it through.

She's so upset that she took his 'I'm fine's at face value. The grinding is getting louder and she can feel gentle vibrations in the tissue she's stitching back together around his slick bones, but she doesn't have time to fuss.

"..Amanda. I'm fine, it's okay." Samuels mumbles beside her, and she realizes she's shaking. "I'm just warm. All my systems are fine." He pauses for a heartbeat, shifts his head to look up at her. His movements are groggy. "It could be likened to human heat stroke. Nothing near fatal yet, please calm down while you have sharp things inside-- me."

"Then why are you so slow?" Her voice is a low rasp.

"I've got a lot of systems shut down to slow the bleeding. My apologies if it's... Disconcerting."

Ripley huffs emotionally, bunching up a wad of scrap fabric and dabbing at his arm. "Should I-- should I bond the skin together..?"

"Yes, please. Carefully. If you tie a tourniquet around it, as well, it will help."

Following his instructions gingerly, she shreds off a strip of fabric from a Working Joe uniform to tie him up with. With careful precision (like deactivating a bomb, she thinks sourly) she bonds the frayed edges of his skin together over the mess of wires and tubing, swearing softly as she glues her fingertips to him several times throughout the process. When his skin is all sealed it has a gritty, raised texture and the nastiest jagged cut line.

She soaks a scrap of cloth in the glue and layers it over the wound as a makeshift cast, hoping it'll help hold all his fluids in. When she's done, she ties the strip of fabric around his bicep and shoulder, bonding the ends together so she doesn't pull the wound apart by tying it. She pats his chest a with trembling hand before shifting back to her feet, swaying with the effort.

The Working Joe she ripped the fabric from is laying several feet away, blank stare twisted in their direction. It's face is mangled from where Samuels had smashed it into the wall.

She stares down at the deactivated android, biting at her lips. "It doesn't have to be-- messy, I don't think. We could just drain it into an old cup or something. A bucket and you can just drink it out of a cup, right? No problem. How are you feeling...?"

Samuels licks his lips and wiggles the fingers of his left hand, slowly moving one at a time. Next is his wrist, and then them muscles up his forearm bunch and relax. He lifts himself up with his good arm and slowly raises and lowers the limb.

"Unfortunately I don't believe I'll be able to lift anything for long periods of time, and it is very... Uncomfortable, but most of it is functional. Thank you."

She flashes him another cheeky grin. "Don't mention it. Think you can crack this droid open and drink from it like an old-timey vampire?"

He grimaces at her with distaste and moves to stand, giving her the most disapproving look she thinks she's ever been on the receiving end of. That glare could cut glass.

"I'm trying to lighten the mood. Just stop overheating on me, I can feel you from here."

"I always run a bit hotter than humans, to be honest." He murmurs as he kneels next to the droid, coldly dragging up it's face and examining it like it's ugly, broken furniture.

She watches him with interest as he flexes his fingers before slipping his hand under the droid's chin and cracking it's head up with a single smooth, powerful motion. It's almost disgustingly unnerving after how many times she's had Joe hands around her neck, but she finds herself glued to it.

Samuels appeared to be ignoring her presence as he drops the droid without warning, standing to remove his jacket and folding it crisply on the laminate behind him before resuming cracking along the droid's neck. Ripley would have laughed at him if she wasn't so invested in getting him to do this-- his standard issue jacket was torn and caked in his own hydraulic fluid.

When he's satisfied with his work he rises on his heel and turns, moving to the row of cabinets on the far wall and pulling doors open systematically. He comes back with a wide, low pan used for God knows what just before she can move to ask him what he's looking for.

He tosses the pan down next to the droid in a display of distaste, picking it up and giving it one final crunch. The tubing of its neck breaks open and he shuffles the things' torso to drain the white liquid out into the shallow pan, favouring his damaged arm.

"I thought you weren't supposed to have emotions, be able to do the unethical, et cetera." She says, cupping her chin in her palm. Samuels doesn't look up from his work to respond.

"I have the ability, yes. And I do understand emotions, yes."

"Shouldn't you-- not that I'd want it, ever, but shouldn't you be able to just shut it all off and get it over with?" Her own words make her cringe, and she hangs on to the heavy silence between his reply.

"My.. Encounter with APOLLO has damaged many of my systems. There are many subtle programs and processes I do not have direct control over, at the moment. Otherwise I assure you, I would have."

As soon as the droid stops draining he tosses it thoughtlessly aside, staring at the slowly settling pan of fluid. "My actions and intentions being derived from negative emotional responses is never something I willingly partake in, if I can help it."

Ripley doesn't find anything to respond with, and he doesn't wait for one, bringing the pan up to his face with a grimace. She sympathizes hard with him having to do this-- it looks disgusting and judging by his expression it was less than pleasurable.

When a thin line of white trails down the side of his mouth and pools along his jaw line she has to look away, her face heating up alarmingly. The sensation is accompanied by a sickened twisting in her gut, and she lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Tastes great, I bet." She tells her watch, adjusting the band idly.

"I don't... The-- composition is off by thirty-four percent. The fluidity is three point six percent thicker, and I can feel it slowly invading my systems like mud. It is disgusting."

"Ew." She agrees.

--